Russian Ark (U)

A dizzying turn through the corridors of Russian history

The idea of history as pageant, as heritage extravaganza, tends to be treated with suspicion these days, but it is spectacularly rehabilitated in the new film by Russian director Alexander Sokurov. I've never quite taken to Sokurov; his films, like Mother and Son, have often seemed turgid parodies of Slavic moodiness, and his last one Taurus, about Lenin, and shot entirely in nauseous green, felt like a slow trudge across a lake of cabbage soup.

Russian Ark takes itself no less seriously; at times you can cut the solemnity with a knife. But it is undeniably a bold and magnificent folly. On one level, it's a guided tour of St Petersburg's Hermitage Museum; on others, a journey through Russian history, a disquisition on art, culture and the destiny of a nation. Its invisible narrator (voiced by Sokurov himself) finds himself mysteriously thrust back into history and wandering the Hermitage's labyrinthine interior in the company of a 19th-century Frenchman (Sergei Dreiden), the Marquis de Custine. This whimsical philosopher, dispensing distracted comments, is himself a wanderer in time and space, a sort of historical-metaphysical Dr Who.

As the camera follows Custine's graceful, dancer-like steps, the visitors mingle with the dramatis personae – lead players as well as countless extras – of Russian history. Time ebbs and flows confusingly: one minute they're caught up in a Napoleonic throng of ball-goers, the next eavesdropping on the gloomy prognoses of the Hermitage's current director (Mikhail Piotrovsky, as himself). Catherine the Great is seen dashing down a snow-covered courtyard; the doomed family of Nicholas and Alexandra sit at dinner all in white, like ghosts. Sometimes the camera will hover on a particular artwork: the Marquis swoons over Canova's Three Graces, and the gaunt faces of El Greco's Saints Peter and Paul peer out of their canvas, hovering like characters in their own right.

What makes Russian Ark unique, however, is that it's all done in one 90-minute shot: as Sokurov puts it, "in a single breath". Without a pause, the Steadicam, operated by Tillman Büttner, glides along corridors, hovers above orchestras, is swept up in waltzes and mazurkas. Theoretically, we don't have to think about the mechanics of the achievement while we watch: it's largely a matter of technical speculation to wonder how Sokurov could be sure of keeping to schedule and not ending up with a three-hour take. And what if someone had tripped, or the hard disc used to record the images had crashed? But inevitably, you do catch yourself wondering how it was all done, and such speculations surely are relevant to the film as an experience. Russian Ark represents an act of faith in a cinema of high risk: here is a filmic event that proposes itself as being no less unique than a stage performance in which everyone involved has to be on prime form. Few films ever demand such discipline or such a sense of the moment. So, while Russian Ark evokes time as an abstract flow, what makes the experience concrete is the singular, never-to-be-repeated 90-minute take that produces the film. The usual argument for filming on digital video means that you can bang out as much footage as necessary and then edit as you please: see this week's Dogme release Open Hearts, with its copious jump-cuts and impression of uncooked emotional intensity. But Sokorov uses digital video in such a way that the safety net of editing disappears, and the sense of casualness is replaced by a rigorous formality reflected in the various ceremonials staged in the film: dances, processions, diplomatic visits. Oddly, although the film celebrates the great canon of classical art, the film itself resembles something more contemporary: Russian Ark is really the record of a monumental piece of site-specific performance art.

This is a fabulously beautiful film, although given the location and the copious supply of sublime furnishings on hand, it would have been hard for it to be otherwise. The use of high-definition digital video creates a vivid sense of texture, the acres of beards and brocade taking on an almost three-dimensional tactility. Space too becomes as uncannily elastic as time: the galleries somehow stretch and distort before your eyes. The use of sound is just as remarkable, the Hermitage becoming a vast aquarium of spectral echoes. Custine's and the narrator's voices are oddly detached on the soundtrack – Sergei Dreiden's voice a curious, quasi-musical fabric of muttering, humming and off-hand cadences – while everything around them blurs into a floating mist of whispers, rustles, footfalls, underpinned by the recurrent distant creak of a harpsichord.

Somehow, though, as immersive as Russian Ark is, I found it hard entirely to yield up to it, to feel more than detached admiration. At one point, when the Marquis dryly predicts, "A terrible boredom will ensue", well, he's not entirely wrong. And, although Custine's remarks are pitched in a tone of foppish irony, Sokurov largely offers us the most banal comments on the Russian spirit: there are no original thoughts in Russia because the authorities do not allow them, Russia is too ready to embrace the mistakes of the West, Peter the Great "taught Russians to enjoy themselves." The film's closing remark could be the most bathetic of all regarding the fate of the nation – "We are destined to sail forever, to live forever." Yet the image that accompanies it seals the film with a grace and mystery to rival any of Tarkovsky's closing visions. This follows a magnificent exodus from the last royal ball of 1913, as the proverbial cast of thousands parade down the Hermitage's gilded wedding-cake staircase: it really is as if all Russia's dead were here, their fates sealed.

Russian Ark demands to be seen, and demands to be discussed in terms of the way it sets out to write a new chapter in the history of film time and space. But in some ways, I find it hard to take as seriously as it clearly wishes itself to be taken. And call me frivolous, but I found myself suddenly distracted by the sight, some three minutes before the end, of a man in the closing parade wearing an unmistakably present-day pair of glasses. I just couldn't help wondering how close Sokurov came to shouting, "OK, everyone – from the top!"

j.romney@independent.co.uk